


the board is set

by TolkienGirl



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, PTSD, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 06:19:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11914974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Coming home is always a revelation.





	the board is set

Coming home is always a revelation.

Luke rolls his shoulders against the lived-in, worn-down cotton knit, chews on his thoughts the way some people chew on tobacco. A little sadness, a little shame: Those are the feelings that belong to everyone in his city…to everyone who’s ever lived.

It’s hard to stay down when the sidewalks run golden. It’s hard to keep running when there’s so much darkness before dawn.

Luke feels Harlem in his veins, Claire in his heart, a purpose behind and before him that says _older_ has to be _wiser_ whether he likes it or not.

 

Jessica keeps seeing ads for therapy pop up on her email. Which, screw Google. Does it know? She’s supposed to be the investigator here.

Trish knows better than to ask about her emotional state, most of the time. And nobody else would even ask.

Jessica keeps going. You can live inside yourself when there’s no outside threat, and there’s no outside threat. No outside threat. No outside threat. (She’d treat it like a new mantra, if she believed in mantras anymore).

She kicks off her boots before she goes to bed and falls asleep in her jeans. She drinks until whiskey might as well be water.

It’s almost a gift, when that phone rings, telling her not to look for John Raymond.

She could use a good outside threat, these days.

 

He’s on the plane, but he’s not on the plane. He can’t save himself if he can’t save his city, and he didn’t realize before that there was more than one city that could turn him inside out.

Colleen calls them nightmares. Danny thinks they’re more like warnings. More like a punishment.

Khun Lun is lost—that’s the only thing he’s found.

He can’t go home, but he has to.

 

Elektra asked him once, _why do you believe?_

 _Faith is like love_ , he had said.

 _Necessary pain?_ And she had sounded too knowing.

 _No,_ he’d said. _Guilt and freedom_.

Matt tells himself that he has neither, now. ( _Or is it both?_ ). He is no longer the Devil of Hell’s kitchen—no, now he prays and he works and he prays again—

But he can’t seem to leave the confessional, and that feels very much like guilt.

He can’t keep his heartbeat from racing, and that has always been a call to arms, to freedom, to home.

He covers his ears.


End file.
